Re: advantages or disadvantages of ADA over pascal or modula

[gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com (Gautier)]

"karl bowl":

> I would like to ask anybody to tell me about advantages or disadvantages of
> ADA(95) over pascal or modula(2).

A few advantages of Ada over Pascal that are not mentioned by Steve

- Ada has a standard library (I/O, maths,...)

- The result of an Ada function can be simply returned where you want;
  in Pascal you must set a pseudo-variable with the same name
  as the function and make your way to the end of the function
  when you have the result (eventually with Goto's!) - it's
  less readable and sub-efficient.

- each composed statement can have more than one statement in it:
  Pascal:
    if cond then
      begin
        st1;
        st2
      end
    else
      begin
        st3;
        st4
      end
  Ada:
    if cond then
      st1;
      st2;
    else
      st3;
      st4;
    end if;

  It is easier, clearer and removes Pascal's ambiguity of
  an "else" for two "if"s.

A few disadvantages of Ada compared to Pascal (rather more typing work):
  - Dispose must be instanciated from Ada.Unchecked_Deallocation
  - some basic functions must be imported from packages:
    * the Ada.Text_IO stuff
    * the Ada.Numerics.Elementary_functions stuff
      (e.g.: x*y, Abs(x), x**2 don't need it, but Sqrt(x) does!)

Generally, you see that Ada has been designed with the cure of Pascal's
weaknesses...

Some discussion on the page below:
__________________________________________________________
Gautier  --  http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/gdm/pascada.htm

NB: For a direct answer, e-mail address on the Web site!